Music has changed, energy is wellness

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Among the most significant evolutions in the customs of the last thirty years is the profound mutation suffered by the world of music. A transformation that we decided to go back through a special alphabet, with a look at the future.

Among the cultural changes seen over the last thirty years, particular attention must be paid to the profound revolution that has radically changed the way music is understood and enjoyed.
From the consecration of hip hop, to the birth of Youtube, from the invention of silent disco, to the use of musical tracks that play an integral part in some sports disciplines. With rhythms that have speeded up the natural succession of events, music has dematerialized, changing its language and customs.
Who and what made these innovations possible and how? How will music be listened to in the future and how much will it change? Let's discover it together with the new alphabet of the musical revolution according to Technogym.

Live arrived on the scene in 2001 and was the first product launched by Berlin-based company, Ableton. A software for music production that revolutionized the concept of live performance, allowing musicians to easily archive, place and play all their samples in front of the audience, allowing them to create music in real time and transforming the laptop into a real instrument.

Although Boiler Room cannot boast of inventing live streaming, the site founded by Blaise Bellville was a huge influence for a new way to listen to electronic music. It all started in 2010, when, for the first time, a set was broadcast live, using a webcam attached with tape to the wall of a disused local boiler. Today, hundreds of thousands of people from the dinner table or office desk connect to the most underground consoles on the world electronic scene.

The largest city in Illinois is the starting block of the musical phenomenon that we call house music. A genre that, as soon as it reached the old continent, in the second half of the eighties, was able to influence - together with techno music, originally from Detroit - the entire evolution of electronic musical genres that we danced to throughout the nineties. Even today, it is the basis of what is most popular in clubs all over the world.

In the century Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. Strongly criticised by the sector magazines, their music was defined as "daft punky trash" at the beginning of their project. A reproach that was transformed into the name of what has become, in the meantime, the most famous duo that electronics have ever seen. Daft Punk cleansed and revitalized house music, transforming the metal and industrial sounds typical of the early nineties and revolutionizing, as a result, the global electronic scene.

Even the destination of entertainment par excellence has changed over time. From the sedentary bohemian life of the sixties, to the popularity gained with the hippie invasion of the seventies, up to the explosion of the parties of the eighties and nineties: the island that has made the history of music is now, more than anything else, an industry of entertainment. It was wild and unlimited, now it is mostly expensive.

From an element of accompaniment to a fundamental component of training. Music and fitness have been able to intertwine with each other, radically changing the relationship that had bound them up to that moment and even influencing their respective evolutions. This is how disciplines were born entirely based on the presence of specific musical accompaniments and many producers have been asked to try their hand at the creation of tracks specially designed for listening during sport. It is no coincidence that, according to cognitive psychologist Daniel Levitin, the neurons in our brain are able to synchronize with the musical rhythm, making us run faster - for example. It's music, the best kind of stimulant!

The institutions, too, have contributed - if not revolutionized - to influence and modify the rites and musical experiences of most night owls. In Ibiza, for example, for about a year, every club has been closing at 6:30 in the morning, preventing useless marathons that by nature would last until late afternoon. In London, in addition to the impossibility of drinking alcohol on the street (a ban that has been in place for years), the closure of some historic clubs is slowly changing the appearance of the city's nightlife. From high-capacity premises to increasingly fragmented realities: an epoch-making passage that should guarantee better control by the police. Will that really be the case?

One of the greatest musical revolutions in history, which began in the seventies and became a global phenomenon since the end of the eighties. With a melodic part, made of rhymes, coming from the street, and a musical part that has its roots in disco music, hip hop is not comparable to any musical genre today, as far as influence, global diffusion and income are concerned.

It is the object that changed our way of enjoying music forever. Launched in 2001 by Apple, it does what walkmans and portable CD players used to do, but still holds thousands of music tracks. In the space that used to take up a tapestry, it allowed an entire library to be transported. The beginning of a new era.

Since its most primitive forms, music has generated movement and dance. Thanks to Pieter-Jan Pieters, movement and dance have started to generate music. It is to him, in fact, that we owe the birth of Owow, the first company in the world to produce musical instruments whose operation is based on simple gestures. Small hardware can recognize the movements of hands and arms, giving voice to synthesizers and virtual drums. Making music has never been so natural.

The pioneers of electronic music par excellence. The group founded in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, students of the Conservatory of Dusselforf, gave life to all kinds of electronic music we know today. Their robotic sonorities and seductive rhythms have consecrated them as inventors of pop synth and contemporary club music.

They translate into sound waves which are produced (or reproduced) by our media. And if until a few years ago the challenge was to create ever more reliable ones, or capable of reaching record volumes, today the research and development that concerns them is mainly focused on their integration. The new speakers will be as powerful as they are invisible and, I'll say, wireless. The state of the art? Someone already speaks of oscillating "walls" studded with microscopic boxes, no larger than seven millimeters in size. Perhaps that's how we'll listen to music in the living room, about ten years from now.

Invented by a team coordinated by the Italian engineer Leonardo Chiariglione, it is a compression algorithm capable of radically reducing the amount of space needed to store information related to a sound track, keeping its quality almost unchanged. Thanks to mp3, it has been possible to create infinite music archives in spaces that were previously unimaginable. Without him there would never have been a download of music on the net.

Say mp3 and think about Napster. Born in 1999, it was the first file sharing program. To use it, you had to share the music library, allowing other users who were connected at the same time to make a copy in real time. It closed after three years, for violation of copyright laws, but was soon replaced by a flourishing of similar programs.

It's the music label that brings together many of the most influential techno djs on the world stage over the past decade. It is owned by the Berlin-based Berghain club, the current world capital for Techno lovers, and considered one of the best clubs in the world. The revolution? A temple of sound in the premises of a former East Berlin power station, where you can't take pictures and where - moreover - it's very difficult to enter. An evening may last up to thirty-two consecutive hours.

Thirty years ago, the Paradise Garage in New York closed, the most influential disco in the history of disco music, opened by Michael Brody in 1976. Located on the second floor of a car park, it was a real club - therefore not open to the public. No alcohol and no food was sold. With the Chicago Warehouse, he was the first local to abolish racial and stylistic discrimination. His audio system was considered one of the best ever made.

The possibility of filming in high definition, by means of very small size supports, has greatly increased - in recent years - the quality level of music videos, while at the same time allowing those who do not have a pharaoh's budget to express themselves at a professional level. Forget short movies in Thriller style: today a reflex and an editing program are enough for a good video.

With the arrival of the Roland TR-808 (1980) drum machine, music makers had the opportunity to give shape to completely new rhythms compared to the past. A total analogue instrument, it's now a cult object and pop music like the Fender Stratocaster is about rock. Most of the music you've danced to in the last twenty years has been created directly by its descendant, the TR-909.

Running Music

Running Music
Your running rhythm becomes music.
New connections and interactivity of the machines will automatically select tracks from the music library that best suit your running rhythm. Running will remain a pleasure, thinking about your well-being as a priority. Everything else is emotion and energy.

A particular phenomenon of dancing musical entertainment, in which the sound is diffused through wireless headphones rather than through common speakers. A type of event that allows the continuation of the dance even beyond the set hours for the reproduction of music at high volume, avoiding the disturbance of public quiet and noise pollution. A concept born at the end of the sixties, which in the last decade - thanks to the lowering of the prices of the hardware needed to listen to music remotely - has seen a real explosion.

It is a selection of music tracks. It can be composed of an album or discography, songs belonging to a certain musical genre or a specific historical period. It is the system of organizing the songs that has distinguished the musical listening of the last decade. Thanks to the diffusion of streaming playback services, tracklists have become the way in which music is distributed, chosen, shared. A revolution that threatens to jeopardise the concept of long plain as it has been known until now.

Revolutions - as we know - always start from below and the shallows of the most sincere and proliferating musical culture are identified with the term "underground" - a term that has always been opposed to the mainstream mass culture. It is in this sort of primordial broth that hip hop, techno and dub step were born, just to give a few examples. This is precisely where the trends that will characterize the music scene of the near future must be sought.

Is virtual reality destined to change the way music lives? Boiler Room and Google created VR Dancefloors and - through their viewers - dragged their audience into the Arena Club Berlin for a techno evening. The answer, then, is yes, or rather, it is: it is already doing so. People want to be part of an otherwise unattainable events and the VR allows you to do just that. But progress does not stop here. Sync Project is using biometrics to associate music with our moods: our heartbeat, measured through an app, will provide the parameters through which to select one or more tracks. An infallible DJ.

Whether it's hip hop, house or techno, the origin of every revolution always has to do with premises in basements, disused power plants, recovery environments and warehouses. They often listen to bad music, but it is here that something new happens every now and then to see the light. Attendance - with critical spirit.

Wellness

Wellness, the lifestyle promoted by Technogym, aimed at improving people’s quality of life thanks to regular physical exercise, healthy diet and positive mental approach. Wellness represents a social opportunity for all stakeholders, Governments, Companies and citizen to create a better world based on people’s health.

In the century of Richard David Limerick, he has been one of the most iconic and influential figures in contemporary music, a step ahead of everyone since 1985. It was from this period, in fact, that ApheX was among the first to respond directly to one of the most common criticisms of electronic music, often reproached for not having a face, a star on the cover or a stage beast, like those of today. Together with Chris Cunningham, he gives the world a series of video clips that have already become part of the history of music.

The truth is that Youtube is winning in the shallow hands. The largest archive of moving images is now also the second most important search engine of the internet, as well as becoming the largest platform for music streaming on the web today. Spotify, Tidal and Apple share the leftovers, unable to create sharing. Inside them there is nothing live recorded with a mobile phone, no video with texts in overlay, no remix by any unknown user that one day will become a professional. Youtube is for everyone. It is also free of charge.

There has been so much talk about the United States and Europe. But what has happened to the east in recent years? In 1991 the Republic of KaZantip, the most important electronic music festival of the former Soviet Union, was born. A madness that, for years, has united hundreds of thousands of people and dozens of DJs in Crimea, on the shores of the Black Sea, and that, for some time now, has had to be transferred -because of protests by the Russian Government- to the island of Ibiza. Within its "borders" there was a separate currency and legislation in use - at least, according to its organisers. Damned perestrojka.

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